1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to gathering, shackling and cooping devices for handling live poultry. More specifically, the present invention relates to mechanical means for gathering, conveying and shackling live poultry and for handling and processing the same.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The traditional way of catching and cooping live poultry for transport to the processing plant is a dirty, undesirable, and labor consuming task. Catching crews must work during nighttime hours, physically catch the live poultry, load the poultry into coops, transfer the filled coops onto a transport vehicle, transport the poultry to the processing plant, remove the coops at the poultry processing plant and finally transfer the live poultry onto shackles and to a processing conveyor for delivery into the processing plant.
Prior to applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 3,796,192, no attempt had been made to deliver already shackled live poultry to the processing plant. While this patent teaches a shackle adapted to manual gathering and shackling at the farm and use of the shackle to suspend the poultry on the processing line, it does not teach a mechanical system and method for gathering and conveying the poultry on foot into the shackle. To date, as far as applicant is aware, no attempt has been made to provide a system for mechanical gathering and shackling of live poultry on foot at the farm and for delivering mechanically gathered and shackled poultry to a processing plant.
U.S. Pat. No. 401,812 teaches the concept of securing chickens individually in a coop during transit. With this exception, there was no known coop device which restrained the poultry within the coop during transit prior to applicant's issued U.S. Pat. No. 3,796,192. Furthermore, prior to applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 3,796,192, there was no known system for handling poultry based on manually gathering and shackling a group of live poultry in a shackle at the farm, transporting the poultry in the shackle to the processing plant and suspending the poultry in the shackle at the plant.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,222,072 is mentioned merely as being illustrative of an early poultry rack employed for processing.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,683,862 is a poultry system which employs suction for loading a transport vehicle at the far for delivery to the processing plant.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,103,915; 3,110,388; 3,672,335; 3,722,477; 3,785,349 and 3,805,744 are illustrative of various conveying systems for catching and loading poultry.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,742,569; 2,448,421 and 2,594,824 illustrate various shackle constructions for use on poultry processing conveyor lines.
While the above devices and methods are illustrative of the types of systems and shackles available for catching, shackling and handling live poultry, to applicant's knowledge, no one has ever developed a system utilizing mechanical means for grouping and shackling live poultry on foot and in shackles adapted for use during processing.